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In This Issue

• A Modest Proposal for Iraq
• An Indie-Rocker Falls Into the Gap
• Beware of People Selling Stuff, Except Us
• Women Need to be Vulnerable and Easy Again
• Marriage is the Perfect Career
• All The Cool Kids Are Doing It...
• Girl Sells Soul to Pour Investment Bankers' Coffee
• Wendy's Sells the Fuck Out: Lame With Mayo
• I Used to Listen to Jesus Christ, Before He Went Mainstream
• The Singing Senators: Behind the "Music"
• In Gateway, I Designed a 3-D Noose
• Barnard Woman Tries to Use, Not Give, Head
• Mexico: Taco Bell Without Plumbing
• Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200
• Wacky Fun Whitey Gets a Date
• Colombia Spectador
• Columbia Bookstore's Introduces New "Ghetto-fab" Line of Clothing

In the interest of showing what real women are made of (business-wise, that is, as we're already known to be physically made of sugar, spice, everything nice, and breasts), the Barnard College Economics Department and the Women in Business Council hosted a competition. It was a virtual day-trading contest on www.virtualstockexchange.com that lasted for six weeks. I believe the competition's goal was to prove that women are as business-savvy as men. Instead, it showed that we just plain suck.

At first, I thought I'd play like a real broker. I picked stocks based on their symbols, mostly things like Cummins NY (CUM) and Balanced Care Corp (BAL). Unfortunately, stocks like that tend to go down. Often and hardcore. I skipped all four classes the first day, hoping to stay ahead of the game. I made $100. The next day, I had to go to work to earn real money and ending up losing $500 in fake investments. After that little life lesson, I said "Fuck it," bought a few shares of Amazon.com, and signed off. That'll teach me to mess with forces my puny female brain couldn't hope to understand.

The day before spring break, I decided to kill some time on the internet. Lo and behold, I still had a bookmark to the stock site, and my account was still active. What I saw saddened me. Although I had bought on the margin (borrowing more fake money to play with), I had managed to make a 4.53% profit. And the worst part? I was in third place.

About 35% of the competitors had lost money. Another 20% were in the black only because they never engaged in a single trade. Interest on their principle pushed them into the top 20. The "winner" of this illustrious competition pulled off an astounding 5.22% return. This annoyed me for several reasons. Not only did I not win, but she probably thought that she beat me at something about which I actually cared. I imagined creative Ms. I-used-my-UNI-as-my-screen-name sitting at her computer all day, frantically refreshing, praying that my stocks wouldn't rise.

And what bold businesswoman took home the coveted $50 second place prize? One Mr. Fernandez. My only guess is that, because he is a SEAS student, he wasn't sure what a "woman" was, and signed up for the competition anyway.

This experience has taught me a few things. One, never try. I'll just screw thing's up worse than if I let nature run its course. Two, girls suck. We suck at math, we suck with money, and we even suck at being corporate tools. No matter how much we'd like to sell out and waste our lives trying to satisfy good old American greed, we'll just never be any good at it.

Dammit, we can't even keep a women's investing competition at a women's college exclusively female! And then the male interloper puts us to shame and takes our prize money! I believe this has conclusively proven that men are better than women at everything that doesn't involve making babies or food. I wonder if "Mr. F" is single-- I could use a husband with good business sense.